Abstract
What are the deep, structural problems in Italy—the problems that preclude a “good economy”—even if everything else goes right? Much of the problems have to do with innovation, “indigenous” and “imported.” Innovation is generally necessary if people are to have gratifying working lives and rising living standards, though some kinds of innovation create a problem. How has Italy fared in this dimension?
Edmund Phelps, the 2006 Nobel laureate in economics, is director of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University. His recent books are Mass Flourishing (Princeton Press, 2013) and Rewarding Work (Harvard Press, 1st ed. 1997, 2nd ed., 2007). See also his study for Italy’s Consiglio delle Ricerche, Enterprise and Inclusion in Italy (Kluwer Academic, 2002).
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- 1.
Gianni Toniolo, ed., The Italian Economy since Unification (Oxford, 2013).
- 2.
I came across this characterization in an op-ed suggesting that “[t]he period after the two world wars was in many ways a Golden Age.” See Antar Haldar, ‘Is there a future for capitalism? It doesn’t have to become an uncontrollable monster,’ The Independent, May 18, 2018.
- 3.
The data are from the World Values Survey. See Mass Flourishing (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), pages 196 and 197.
- 4.
Data in the European Values Surveys are usually found in World Values Surveys but not in cases where American data to accompany them are not available.
- 5.
Mario Baldassarri, The European Roots of the Eurozone Crisis, (Palgrave, 2017).
- 6.
Jean-Paul Fitoussi and Edmund Phelps, The Slump in Europe: Reconstructing Open Economy Theory, (Basil Blackwell, 1988).
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Phelps, E.S. (2019). Solving the Problem in Italy and Much of Western Europe. In: Paganetto, L. (eds) Yearning for Inclusive Growth and Development, Good Jobs and Sustainability. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23053-1_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23053-1_1
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